Andarin: The Mountains: Psh, been there done that. HAY HAY HAY

“This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face.
The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown.:
The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout 'Save Us!'...:

...and I'll look down, and whisper, 'No'"

There was something that the two held in common. If anyone understood what it was to protect your family, it was Nicodemus above all others. He remembers a time when he had nearly given his life to protect those he loves. Magnolia had said of him that he thought too much of others and not enough of himself. He considered the people of Wolfrange his family, and he would fight to the death for them at a moments notice. Darkly he thinks of his…warning to Formaldehyde on Skylar. He things on why he had left Andarin, simply for fear of his lack of control. Nonetheless he had returned. He was stronger than he thought he was before. Before he had run in fear of bringing harm to his few loved ones to the sea, the farthest reach of time and space. And yet now he knew he couldn’t hurt them, even if it was a command from the one he served. His heart was stronger than the shards. Everyone had always said of him that he was a rare thing indeed that when he loved he did so with all his heart.

Nicodemus is not silent as he stood. How could he be? With flames dancing about him, destruction was everything that his element stood for. Fire was only silent in the gentle hold of a candle, and that was not true fire. That was not his flames, because his were far too feral. His flames were a wildfire, a back draft. His eyes, his mane, his muscles, all were evidence to the crudeness and the passion that composed him. All was evidence to the fact that he was unstable, he was unpredictable and unable to control the whims that possess him. His eyes held flames, his were rigid and full of intensity in a way that it almost hurt you to look at them. Nicodemus was raw fury over and over again.

He had been a terrible father in the beginning. Rejecting his daughter simply because she was so like his beloved Hawthorne. And yet here he was, loving as ever, whatever displacement that held them apart broken and now they were closer than ever before.

Her words do not startle him. “There are always dark days to come.” A simple whisper, not in defiance or anything more than a statement. He knows. Oh God does he understand.

He listens once more, Andraste stretching out her wings silently. It does not take long in the silence for him to respond. A chuckle. “You don’t understand.” A smile. “A promise by me….” He finds her eyes then, and the fury and passion of the world dares her to doubt, because all the truth that she needed was there, burning into her gaze. “Is binding.”

Andraste takes to the skies then, only to hover closely. “You have my word. I will aid Jormungandr when she needs me, and defend her with my life, if necessary.”

SEER

**NICODEMUS**

Existence is random. Has no pattern save what we imagine after staring at it for too long. No meaning save what we choose to impose. This rudderless world is not shaped by vague metaphysical forces. It is not God who kills the children. Not fate that butchers them or destiny that feeds them to the dogs. It's us. Only us.